unsel."

MR. CAXTON.--"You see that Roland tells us exactly what sort of a book it
shall be."

PISISTRATUS.--"Trash, sir?"

MR. CAXTON.--"No--that is not necessarily trash--but a book of that class
which, whether trash or not, people can't help reading. Novels have become
a necessity of the age. You must write a novel."

PISISTRATUS, flattered, but dubious.--"A novel! But every subject on which
novels can be written is preoccupied. There are novels on low life, novels
of high life, military novels, naval novels, novels philosophical, novels
religious, novels historical, novels descriptive of India, the Colonies,
Ancient Rome, and the Egyptian Pyramids. From what bird, wild eagle, or
barn-door fowl, can I

'Pluck one unwearied plume from Fancy's wing?' "

MR. CAXTON, after a little thought.--"You remember the story which
Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) told us the other night. That
gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot--puts you
chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you with
characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the time of
Fielding. You can give us the country squire, as you remember him in your
youth: it is a specimen of a race worth preserving--the old idiosyncrasies
of which are rapidly dying off, as the railways bring Norfolk and
Yorkshire within easy reach of the manners of London. You can give us the
old-fashioned parson, as in all essentials he may yet be found--but before
you had to drag him out of the great Puseyite sectarian bog; and, for the
rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many popular writers are
doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little in England,
to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the kennel to shy
at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something useful might be
done by a few good humored sketches of those innocent criminals a little
better off than their neighbors, whom, however we dislike them, I take it
for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape or another, as long as
civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole, as good in their present
shape, as we are likely to get, shake the dice-box of society how we
will."

PISISTRATUS.--"Very well said, sir; but this rural country gentleman life
is not so new as you think. There's Washington Irving--"

MR. CAXTON.--"Charming--but rather the manners of the last century than
this. You may as well